We rounded up our favorite beauty looks from the SS17 shows in Milan, London, and Paris.

Beauty

10.11.2016

By Elena Sendona

9 Next-Level Beauty Looks from the SS17 Shows

Catwalk beauty always tends to resist uniformity, and the striking and pioneering looks we at the slew of SS17 shows were a case in point. Below, find our favorite beauty moments from London, Paris, and Milan.

London Fashion Week

Normally, the mere mention of the word “floral” makes us shiver with basicness. At the Preen by Thornton Bregazzi show, however, makeup artist Val Garland managed to spin florals into an incredibly un-basic and downright ethereal beauty look. She dried, pressed, and then secured real daisies, cornflowers, and other dreamy flowers onto the models’ glossy, amply moisturized faces, necks, and collarbones.

In fact, Garland barely ventured out of florals for the entire beauty look; she even used them in lieu of lipstick, gluing rose petals onto the models’ lips with eyelash glue. Paired with tiny side braids courtesy of Eugene Souleiman, the beauty look—if it had been in the wrong hands—could’ve easily taken a Coachella pivot and resulted in nothing more than a chilling flower crown. Thankfully, Garland knew just what to do with a surplus of flowers—and for that, we thank her.

At Erdem’s SS17 show, Anthony Turner delivered a hairstyle that was inspired by couture and 17th century shipwrecks—a little bit of high and low, if you will. And looking at the ‘do, we can see why he chose these as his inspiration. Turner took the elegance of low buns and professionally-braided hair, and gave it a bit of a peasant twist—as if he had done these girls’ hair real nice, and then left them for about eight hours on the bow of a ship. The result was still a “bun-plait,” just messier and thus more endearing—and made all the more so by the grosgrain ribbon and he used to frame the face.

Then there was the beauty look at Anya Hindmarch, which was both ingenious and thought-provoking. Hair virtuoso Sam McKnight slicked back the models hairs into sleek, polished, low ponytails, which were then wrapped up and secured in place, plastic-surgery-bandage style, with brilliant head adornments by the iconic milliner, Stephen Jones. On-trend slicked low ponytails by hair virtuoso Sam McKnight were preciously wrapped with geometrically precise Stephen Jones head-bandages as a reference to plastic surgery and spa sessions. Right before models walked out onto the runway, Val Garland swooped in with some mist spray to give the girls a sweaty, glowing look.

Milan Fashion Week

After going to the gym, long hair tends to assume a distinct consistency that, when pulled back into a pony, looks sleek and wet but feels like a sweaty and foreign invader that’s attached itself onto your head. And it was this well-groomed, smooth pony that the majority of the models at the Max Mara SS17 show wore—and that left ample room for Tom Pecheux’s strokes of genius that started at about the models’ temples and extended into the cheekbone area. The look recalled an artist’s palette, if not a playful take on contouring, or what happens when you go to the gym with any amount of makeup on.

Glitter took the mystical path at Giamba’s SS17 show, where Val Garland drew graphic symbols and images in silver glitter onto the girls’ faces. The designs recalled flash tattoos—done right—and proved that, if you look hard enough, you can wrest make something very good out of an incredibly bad, Coachella-inspired beauty trend.

At Margiela‘s SS17 show, Pat McGrath took the already-mystical looks and took them to extraterrestrial levels with bold, outlined cat-eyes used with stunning pastels. Some of the girls’ faces were drizzled in subtle glitters, others were left glistening using a transparent gloss. The result was a frosted-looking Ziggy Stardust, that—coupled with headpieces and headsets, made for nouveau space-age, at its best.

At Rochas, makeup artist Lucia Pieroni emphasized the eyebrows with superimposed dark lines, and took the models’ wispy lashes to new, Twiggy-tinged lengths, while hairstylist Paul Hanlon curled and heat-pinched the models’ cutesy bangs for a killer, ’40s-without-the-female-oppression look.